Design in Organisations

The symposium Design in Organisations took place on 16-17 November 2017 at the Lucerne School of Art and Design, organised by the Competence Centre for Design & Management under the leadership of Dr. Sabine Jungingner.

Global events and developments challenge both private and public organisations to rethink the ways they are going about their ‘business’ to achieve their objectives, fulfil their mandates and succeed in a dramatically changing environment. Design researches and design practitioners argue that successful organisations are those that develop and foster internal design capabilities.

But what does this mean? What counts as design capability? Where within an organisation do design capabilities ‘live’, where should they be developed and located? What is needed and who is needed to develop advanced design capabilities that serve organisations in the pursuit of their vision and in the fulfilment of their purpose? What examples can we look to and learn from in Switzerland and internationally?

How can managers in organisations and design professionals benefit from state-of-the-art design research and new design methods? What roles can design research assume and what tasks can design research address as part of a future-oriented organisation?

Workshops with Enrique Martinez (left) and Catalina Jossen Cardozo (right).

The symposium connected researchers, private entrepreneurs, designers and managers in public organisations to generate answers to these questions but also to shed light on the intersection of design research, design theory and design practice in the organisational context.

Keynote speakers were:
Richard Buchanan, PhD, Professor in Design & Innovation at Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University.
Xianghyang Xin, PhD, Professor, School of Design, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China.
Enrique Martinez, designer and public sector innovation leader.
Catalina Jossen Cardozo, MA graduated with a Master of Arts in Design from the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Arts and Design in 2016.
Kaja Tooming Buchanan, PhD, Professor of Design Theory, Practice and Strategy in the College of Design & Innovation at Tongji University, Shanghai, China.